


i'll hold your music (here inside my soul)

by TeamMightyPen



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship Bracelets, Not Beta'd, Soulmate AU, au where everyone is alive in 2020, bobby and carrie aren't related, i wrote this at 2am, mentioned willex, sunset curve are friends with the 2020 gang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:48:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29284812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamMightyPen/pseuds/TeamMightyPen
Summary: It was safe to say that Luke’s mind was near constantly full to the brim with music. As a songwriter, it was one of his favorite parts of himself. He had notebooks galore, all chock-full of half-written verses and melodies he hummed once in the shower and chord progressions he’d heard in a dream.Usually, once he freed them from his mind via his pen, they were gone, saved in ink on the page. He would come back to them, to draw inspiration, to weave pieces together, to fashion them into full-fledged songs eventually.There was always the one song that stuck around, though. It would never leave him, no matter how hard he tried.The Song had always been there, since before Luke could remember.-A soulmate AU you haven't seen before.
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 161





	i'll hold your music (here inside my soul)

**Author's Note:**

> My first work completed for JATP...or for any fandom. I got the idea from a horror(I think) prompt on tumblr and couldn't let it go, so I started writing at 12:30am and didn't stop until I just now got done over two hours later. I have a Differential Equations lecture in six hours, send help. Don't worry, this isn't horror or anything, I was just inspired tangentially. This is not beta'd or proofread, I'm just excited to post something for the first time and validate myself for all the times I've called myself a writer while I've not ever posted anything.

It was safe to say that Luke’s mind was near constantly full to the brim with music. As a songwriter, it was one of his favorite parts of himself. He had notebooks galore, all chock-full of half-written verses and melodies he hummed once in the shower and chord progressions he’d heard in a dream. 

Usually, once he freed them from his mind via his pen, they were gone, saved in ink on the page. He would come back to them, to draw inspiration, to weave pieces together, to fashion them into full-fledged songs eventually.

There was always the one song that stuck around, though. It would never leave him, no matter how hard he tried.

He would hear pieces bouncing around between his ears. Sometimes it was a drum beat. Sometimes he heard snippets of words. Sometimes it was two voices, his and another always unrecognizable one, blending more beautifully than he would’ve thought possible as their two sounds danced together.

The Song had always been there, since before Luke could remember. At first there wasn’t much, just three notes that repeated over and over. One day, five more came to accompany them. As he had grown older, he’d learned what The Song meant.

Luke’s parents loved to sing their Song to one another, or they would sing it by themselves when they were alone to feel the other’s presence with them. It was a beautiful sound, and Luke loved hearing it. He asked his mom to sing their Song to him each night before bed for far more years than he would ever admit to Alex, Reggie, or Bobby.

When Luke tried to sing his parents’ Song, either by himself or with them, he’d found he never could. Even though he’d heard it a million times, his mind couldn’t recreate any part of it. 

Luke would get frustrated and pout, but his mom would kneel down and smile at him.

“That’s because it isn’t your Song,” she’d told him. “Your father and I get to share this with each other and with other people, and it’s something that’s just ours. You have your own Song, and it’s just yours. One day you’ll find the person you get to share it with.”

Luke knew from middle school that he wanted to be a musician. He’d always been crafting songs, even while his own Song taunted him in its incompleteness. 

When he’d gotten his first guitar for Christmas in seventh grade, another gift had come with it: more of The Song. He didn’t know which gift he valued more.

Luke learned how to play chords and arpeggios. He learned techniques while his hands learned the dexterity they needed. He developed muscle memory and honed an ability for transcribing music from his ears to his fingers.

The more he learned, the more his mind seemed to go wild with ideas at possibilities for songs. He started collecting notebooks. He always had one near or on his person with a pen also within reach. They filled haphazardly at the whims of Luke’s imagination.

Luke would play his ideas on his guitar and let them drift through his bedroom. They’d grow on their own and become _more_. It never felt like Luke was writing them, they just came to him.

His parents called it a gift.

When he wasn’t playing his songs, Luke was playing his Song. It burned into his mind. When he didn’t know where to go next with a piece, his fingers would always bring him back home.

The four boys started a band together. They met in Bobby’s garage and played their hearts out. Luke collected stray ideas all together to form and fill in coherent songs that they would play.

They sounded _good_.

The boys all knew about each other’s Songs by then. Reggie’s had a country twang to it that drove Luke crazy. He liked to play his Song’s chord progressions on his bass, but he was learning the banjo too to help him fill out the sound in his head. Alex was always humming his between reps and during set up and tear down, lost in his own world. It was soft and sweet, like a lullaby. When he got anxious, he would tap out rhythms and vocalize melodies to help calm himself down. Bobby’s Song was energetic and exciting, a sharp contrast to his shy self. He liked to play it on his electric before practices started and would always be finishing up just as the boys came into the garage, so they never heard much more than that which would seep out into the backyard.

None of them ever tried to replicate each other’s Songs. Songs were personal, they were intimate. Anyway, it wasn’t like they could recreate them, even if they tried.

Luke tried one night to transpose his Song to paper, but it never worked. His pen would hover above the sheet but never write anything at all. He tried to get something, anything, even just a word down, but it wouldn’t come out, determined to stay only inside his head. That was what Songs did.

They named their band Sunset Curve and started playing gigs. Other people liked their music, too.

Bobby became less shy when he was on stage, drawing energy from his Song to create a confidence that he would wear. Alex let out his anxiety on the drumset in a different way than how his Song would relieve his anxiety but which ended up helping just the same. Reggie wrote more country music in his free time. Sunset Curve never played it.

Luke grew older. His voice deepened and matured. One afternoon in the middle of practice, he stopped playing. The other three petered out once they noticed.

“Luke?” Alex asked from behind the set. “You okay?”

There was a voice singing his Song now. _His_ voice was singing his Song.

“Yeah,” Luke smiled and assured. He didn’t explain what happened. 

But after practice, he was humming again, a tune which complimented what they’d heard him play before. Reggie, Bobby, and Alex shared a grin while Luke wasn’t looking.

All four of them were in the music program at their high school. There were a lot of talented students in their class. 

In junior year, there were a bunch of new freshmen who came up into the class. They showed a lot of promise. Sunset Curve became friends with a group of four of the freshmen. Their groups meshed well as eight, but they also all found a complement within themselves. Alex and Carrie liked to dance together. Reggie and Flynn explored new music genres and played pranks on the other six. Bobby and Nick became study partners. And Luke? Luke had Julie.

She was...well, she was Julie. She wasn’t afraid to be herself and wore it proudly, with her butterfly hair clips and dozen friendship bracelets and doodled shoes.

Reggie suggested that their group of eight should have a name. Flynn was unamused by Bobby’s suggestion of “Octuple Trouble”.

Luke wondered what the four freshmen’s Songs sounded like. He never asked. Songs were intimate, and lots of people were shy about other people hearing them. Songs revealed the deepest parts of your soul. 

Luke knew that his soul was pure music and music alone.

Besides his parents and his brothers, no one ever heard Luke’s Song. No one else needed to hear his Song. It was his.

Julie, Carrie, and Flynn showed the boys how to make friendship bracelets. They explained how you made them for each other and then tied it on each other’s wrists so they would never come off as long as the friendship would last. Luke thought he would be embarrassed by wearing friendship bracelets and how it would clash with his style of jean chains and cutoff tees and metal rings, but somehow he wasn’t. They all eight hung out at Carrie’s house and tied bracelets for hours that night, with Star Wars playing in the background on the TV at Reggie and Nick’s requests. By the time they were finished, beads were in mis-matched piles on the ottomans and slivers of tape and string sprinkled the floor. It was one of the best nights of their lives.

Luke wore his bracelets proudly. They were dorky, but they were so _them_ and Luke loved them. He had a purple and blue knotted pattern from Julie, and an orange and green one with beads that read B-I-C-E-P-S---M-C-G-E-E from Flynn.

Carrie made Alex something pink that Luke never saw closely. They’d spent the whole evening with her teaching him some fancy pattern of knots that would make a picture, so theirs matched one another’s.

Luke didn’t see what Bobby, Nick, or Reggie had made or for whom. He’d been too focused on his bracelet for Julie. He tried to channel all of his love for the friendship he’d found with her and with all eight of them into the strings, but his fingers that normally were so dextrous and able on the guitar couldn’t hold the strands with the right tension and it ended up a mess.

She loved it and wore it anyway.

Luke eventually had one bracelet from each person in Octuple Trouble and had given one to each person in turn.

Luke’s Song still plagued his mind day-in and day-out. Every day it felt it was more complete. He heard it all the way through now, but even still it wasn’t complete. There was always his guitar playing, but there was another instrument dueting his. Luke knew what the instrument was in his heart but he couldn’t name it when he tried. It was just...there. A sound that he knew better than any other but it was also different than anything he’d ever heard before. He heard his voice singing all the words, and he heard another voice, too, but it belonged to nobody. The other voice was the biggest mystery to him. It made him feel like he was home but like he didn’t know where home _was_.

A few months into junior year, Julie changed. She became more reserved and stopped playing in music class. Luke knew why. He didn’t know how he could help, though. He tried to just be _there_ , and to make sure she knew he always would be.

Sunset Curve was gaining a reputation and playing more and more gigs.

Carrie started her own group, Dirty Candi. At some point she cut off all of her bracelets. Alex still went to all of their performances to support her. 

Julie and Flynn stayed closer than ever before, but the rest of them...drifted.

A part of Luke fractured alongside their group. He was pretty sure a part of each of the rest of them did, too.

Senior year started and the eight of them felt practically like strangers once more. They were still all in music class, but it was different. It had been different for a long time. Nick and Bobby didn’t study together anymore. Alex and Carrie still hung out, but Reggie and Flynn hadn’t pranked anyone since November. Luke missed Julie.

Alex came to practice late one afternoon in September with wonder in his eyes and voice about a skateboarder he’d met.

“Well, he sort of ran into me...literally, and we both fell down. And I scraped up my hands pretty bad on the concrete trying to catch myself-” Alex showed them the bandaged heels of his palms “- and it stung, like, really bad. You know how I have that nervous habit where I hum my Song when I’m anxious? Yeah, okay, so I started to do that while he apologized and grabbed band-aids out of his pocket - I don’t know why he had band-aids, Reggie, probably because he gets scrapes pretty often too. But so I was humming my Song, and _he started humming it too_.”

Luke wondered what it felt like to hear your other half complete you.

A year after Julie changed back in junior year, she changed again. She came back. She played in class again and Luke was once again in awe of the power packed into this sophomore. He’d forgotten just how amazing she was. He didn’t know what had triggered this return, but he didn’t care. She was back.

Three weeks later, Luke was looking for Mrs. Harrison. He needed her to sign some form for him for his guidance counselor, something about graduation requirements. Luke hadn’t been paying attention.

He had his hand on the handle to the music room and was about to twist it open before he heard a sound from inside.

Three notes, repeated. Five notes. The whole sequence repeated once more.

Any thoughts of forms fell from his mind. Luke opened the door with a fervor he’d never experienced before. He rushed into the room but only made it two steps in before his shoes squeaked to a halt on the wooden floor.

Luke locked eyes with Julie. She sat behind the piano, in a black dress he’d never seen before.

The paper in his hand fluttered to the floor. Wordlessly, Luke crossed the room and picked up Mrs. Harrison’s acoustic guitar. He slipped the strap over his neck and faltered. What if he was wrong?

He took a deep breath and pushed his doubts down.

Luke turned around and saw Julie, who was watching him with a concerned curiosity.

No turning back. No regrets.

Luke’s hands started playing the first song he’d ever played. The song he’d played a billion times. It was etched into his dreams and it framed his every thought. Luke played his Song.

Julie’s eyes widened in recognition and her jaw dropped open. 

Luke started singing and that seemed to spring Julie out of her stupor. Her fingers started moving across the keys in chords that accompanied his plucking.

She picked up the verse where he left off and Luke was hearing The Song for the first time. The other instrument that melded with his was the piano underneath Julie’s fingers. The other voice was hers.

Luke could see it in her eyes. She felt it, too.

Home.

It was exhilarating.

They filled the music room with their Song - _no longer his, it was theirs_ \- but the entire world was just them two. Nothing else existed but their music together.

Luke walked around the side of the piano while he played so he could be closer to Julie. He saw his god-awful friendship bracelet on her wrist while she played and smiled at the part of her that he carried on his, too.

That wasn’t the only part of her he’d been carrying, he realized.

_Their Song._

Wow.

The two of them drew to a close, out of breath with amazement.

_We create  
A perfect harmony_

They locked eyes. They were home.


End file.
